PREACHER BY GARTH ENNIS UNDATED DRAFTINT. BAR - NIGHT CASSIDY sits at the bar with a glass of beer, packet of Camels in front of him beside his change, one lit in his hand. Bar noises behind him - jukebox music, conversation. Occasional glimpse of people passing by behind him. smoky atmosphere. We stay on him as he knocks back the heer, sets down the empty glass, smiles wryly. CASSIDY Piss. And not enough of it. The BARMAN picks up the glass. Cassidy draws on his cigarette, sits back. He'll now tell us the story as if we were sitting at the bar beside him, so he won't always be looking right at us. CASSIDY So where was I? Oh aye, the Preacher. Well, before I get stuck into this you'd better get it straight that this is no ordinary story. Ordinary story is boy meets girl, boy gets girl up the stick, father forbids boy to see girl but true love wins through, audience pukes its ring, the end. Or maybe bad guys kill helpless innocents, head bad guy with English accent prepares to take over the world, Arnie Schwarzennegger kills everybody in sight, girl shows us her tits, everything blows up, the end... The barman sets down a fresh beer. Cassidy is pleased. CASSIDY But this one's different. Just about as different as you can fucking get, to tell you the truth. Jesus, T was smack in the middle of it, and even I don't believe half the fucking things that went on. There was angels. Demons. Rednecks. Gunslingers from beyond the grave. Fucking vampires, would you believe. There was a boy with a face that looked like your arsehole, and a woman who was braver than any man I ever met, and a man who stood tall in front of Heaven itself and faced down the power of God He sips his beer, looks thoughtful, smiles a bit. (CONTINUED)1 CONTINUED: CASSIDY You wouldn't know to look at me, but I'm ninety-seven years old. I thought I'd seen it all. But you won't have to see too mich of this one before you realize what I did: that absolutely fuckin’ anything can happen anytime. That there aren't any rules to this. That you're entering the one hundred percent bugfuck maniac Geoffrey Dahmer's~ running-down-Broadway-with-John Wayne Bobbitt 's-dick~in-a-bucket-of-napalm- zone, and any attempt to understand it is gonna make your arse turn inside out. It's a love story. It's a horror story. It's a violent story. He thinks for a moment, trying to find the words. Then he relaxes. CASSIDY It started in church. EXT. ANNVILLE ~ NIGHT Starting from out in the Texas desert, we move slowly in towards the few lights of ANNVILLE. Getting closer, we realize we're in Hicksville, the ass-end of nowhere, A main street with a few smaller ones off it. We move past a bar - just some low light, not much noise. Looking down a side Street, we see two DRUNKS supporting each other for the stagger home. Further on, a quick look down an alley reveals movement, the sound of breaking glass. A sheriff's dept. cruiser passes us, going in the opposite direction. Moving across the town square we see another DRUNK passed out on a bench, with a vile-looking DOG raping his unconscious leg. We move slowly towards the church, a simple wooden building just outside town, on the opposite side to where we came in. A light is on within, and as we get closer we hear raised voices, 2 man's and a woman's. INT. CHURCH - NIGHT The church is an old building, as simple within as without. Just rows of pews facing a lectern on a raised platform. Large black cross on the wall. (CONTINUED)